My Day as a Dental Assistant

My Day as a Dental Assistant

Publication: The Lookout

Date: May 5, 2002

Column: First Look

Category: Missions

Home to more than 25 million people, Mexico City is one of the world's largest urban areas. Like other mega-cities, it's a study in contrasts.

At a downtown restaurant called Moras, diners enjoy the same kind of tasty churros and hot chocolate that have been served there since 1935. At intersections crowded with lime-green Volkswagen Beetle taxis, men in black suits approach car windows to drum up business for their mariachi bands. Outside a 300-year-old cathedral filled with gold statues of Mary and Jesus, worshipers pay a few pesos to a medicine man who blows smoke on them from his peace-pipe. At upscale Monterrey Tech, one of the city's more than 200 universities, smartly-dressed students plug their laptop computers into picnic tables equipped with network connections. In another section of town, families live in dumps and eke out their living by sorting garbage.

On a recent mission trip my wife and I talked with enthusiastic leaders from Mexican churches who came to my seminar on preaching and writing. We met Juanita, who prayed for 14 years that her husband Jorge would become a Christian. (He did, and now they serve together in a new church on the city's south side.) We met four-year-old Armando, who stood with the worship team and strummed a tiny guitar to accompany the congregation's singing. At an evening program called El Oasis, we met a visionary group of young graduates from Georgia Tech University who serve as campus missionaries reaching dozens of Mexican college students. Under a clear night sky, we stood on a mountainside and prayed as millions of city lights flickered across the valley below.

One morning our missionary hosts Steve and Debbie Palich drove us to an economically depressed area on the city's north side. In a church building we set up a makeshift clinic—medical checkups in a Sunday school classroom, a barbershop in the courtyard, a dental clinic in the basement.

In the midst of overwhelming need, relief efforts like this one make you feel like you're trying to empty the ocean one teaspoon at a time. Yet, for many of the poor, visiting medical teams offer about the only help they can get.

My job for the day? Dental assistant. "Hold this tray," commanded the dentist who had volunteered her services. Obediently I donned a mask and took my seat on a stool next to the patient's cot. Our first patient was a middle-age woman whose two front teeth were almost completely black. It was the first time I'd ever had a front-row seat for any dental procedure, let alone a major reconstruction job. For the next three and a half hours I handled the suction tube powered by a portable air compressor we had brought along, and watched as the dentist carefully drilled away the decay and rebuilt the teeth.

The patient winced and perspired. Unable to speak enough Spanish to offer words of comfort, I patted her arm and silently prayed. Could she tell how completely inept I felt as a dental assistant? Probably. But the atmosphere in the room offered reassurance. A few feet away, another dentist hugged a frightened little girl who needed a tooth pulled. "Jesus loves you," I heard the dentist say in Spanish.

Finally we were done. The black teeth had been replaced by two perfectly-shaped white ones. The dentist held up a large mirror so the woman could see the work close up. Tears of joy filled the woman's eyes. "Gracias," she said to the dentist. Then the woman turned to me. "Gracias," she said. As she stole out the door she was smiling broadly. And so was I.